by Stash (v5)
Gwen nodded several times. Brian relaxed his arm and took her hand in his.
“To me, he’s just a friend,” Gwen said. There’s that word again: friend. “But what if he is some kind of drug dealer—I mean, I don’t know him that well. I have no idea what kind of life he really has now. What will happen then?”
“Then maybe his time is up,” Roger said.
“Because of me. What if he finds out? I could be in danger. He could come after me. That’s what they do, isn’t it? You open your mouth and they come after you.”
She pictured the possibilities, the revenge, and grew agitated, her lip starting to quiver. Would they have to move out of town? She couldn’t imagine Jude hunting her down.
“That won’t happen,” Brian said. “No one will know it was you.”
“What if I have to testify at his trial?”
“If he is a drug dealer, the police will collect a lot more evidence before making any arrest,” Roger explained. “A small transaction like yours won’t be on the docket. Gwen, if there was any risk to you at all, I’d counsel you otherwise.”
“Sweetie, don’t worry,” Brian said. “Roger’s right.”
Roger’s desk phone rang, followed a few seconds later by his cell phone. Brian saw him glance at the clock on the wall.
“Okay,” Gwen finally said.
“Good,” said Roger.
Brian let out a breath and squeezed her hand.
Hold on. Gwen thought of something else. “You know, I went to James Anderson’s funeral. I met his daughter and she threatened to sue me—for wrongful death of her father.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Brian said, letting go of her hand and turning to face her.
“If the criminal charges are dropped, will I be protected from a civil lawsuit?”
“I told you it wasn’t a good idea to go to the funeral.”
“You won’t,” said Roger. “But when there’s no evidence of legal culpability, proving responsibility in a civil suit is very challenging.”
“It happened to OJ,” Gwen pointed out.
“After a botched criminal trial that was a media spectacle,” said Roger. “I wouldn’t worry about a wrongful death suit in this situation.”
“But it could happen.”
Roger’s mouth tightened. He spoke slowly. “It could happen, whether you tell the police or not where you got the bag. But it probably won’t. It’s a separate issue entirely.”
They stopped talking and exchanged looks in the taut silence, like three Wild West gunfighters waiting to see who would draw first. What was she delaying for? There was no other way out. No other role to play except that of a rat.
Don’t think of it that way—you’re a protective mother and wife. Look at your priorities. Think of your family. You’re backed into a corner and there’s one and only one escape hatch, so what are you waiting for?
“He’s a parent, too,” Gwen said. “He has a daughter starting college.”
Brian and Roger waited, saying nothing.
Gwen reached into her purse. Her hand came out holding Jude’s business card from Gull. She handed it to Roger.
She Had to Get It Somewhere
They stopped at Pearl Alley Bistro for an early lunch. Gwen ignored the menu, and so Brian ordered a half bottle of wine even though he had to return to work, and a salad and plate of steak frites they would share.
Gwen didn’t have much to say. She kept her eyes anywhere except on Brian, watching the restaurant fill with the lunch crowd. He didn’t try for her attention or distract her with banter. Some lunch date. She was upset and who wouldn’t be after you’ve been legally extorted, and he was embarrassed at her reluctance to reveal Gates. He’d known where she’d gotten the pot—you don’t surface a bag of weed and not tell your husband where it’s from. But the finger-pointing responsibility belonged to Gwen. They both knew it, and Brian had waited her out.
He had never liked Jude, not from the night he first met Gwen and watched her work around the bar with a tray of drinks. He had been studying her movements and noticed the tall guy walk up to the waitress station to get his glass refilled. He remembered Gwen’s body language. She leaned in when he spoke to her. She looked into his eyes. She smiled at what he said. Brian didn’t know this woman yet but he felt the threat of the other man, understanding he’d have to get past him to get to her.
He was at the Patriot that night because his parents had come to town for the weekend. They arrived fifteen minutes early for their dinner reservation and the hostess escorted them to the bar where she said they could enjoy a drink while waiting for their table to be set. His father groused about this strategy to get them spending more money; his mother complained about the rigid chairs and tiny bar table. Brian had already spotted the cocktail waitress and begun plotting to ask her out.
When the waitress arrived for their drink order, Brian’s mother announced they were visiting their son who was attending medical school here; she had to get in that comment about her son becoming a doctor. Gwen took the news with a glance at Brian and a neutral smile, asking what they would like to drink. The bar was busy. Brian ordered for the three of them, his eyes on Gwen.
When their table was ready, his father refused to tip the cocktail waitress because the drinks were going on their dinner bill and he said he’d tip on the total then, after subtracting the tax. His parents had a discussion about it. His mother said it wouldn’t be fair because the dining room waiter would get tipped for service that the cocktail waitress provided. His father said they shared the tips. His mother wasn’t so sure. Brian got up during dinner to use the restroom and found Gwen in the bar, gave her a ten-dollar bill, and apologized for forgetting to tip. “I sat over at that table,” he said, pointing. She said, “Sure, I remember, you’re the doctor I’ll call when I get sick.” He took her comment as an invitation and asked her out right then, the hottest-looking woman in the building, the best he’d seen in a long time, considering he spent most of his time studying and working with med school geeks. Why shouldn’t he start with the best-looking woman and work his way down the list until someone said yes or he admitted defeat? This was one of those lucky times when he started and ended at the top of the list. Within a week they were paired up. In a month she moved in. The speed with which their relationship launched meant he had to carefully vet the conditions that got them started—what led up to, what got left behind. Was she on the rebound? Was there something weird about her? How could there not be consequential events and important people in Gwen’s life that he was interrupting? Those first few weeks, whenever he came to pick up Gwen at the restaurant, Brian kept an eye on Jude. Because Brian knew. Men knew when other men had an interest in a woman.
Six months into their love affair—that’s what they called it, as if it were secret or illicit even though they had moved in together after the first month—Gwen was missing too many lectures and working more hours at the Patriot trying to save money for the following year. She wasn’t as enthusiastic as she’d hoped to be about law school, she admitted to Brian. She thought she’d serve as a lawyer for a civil rights or women’s organization someday, in contrast to most of her classmates, who were targeting the more practical and lucrative world of corporate or criminal defense law. Everyone seemed so mercenary. The reading was dull. Classmates competitive. Yet she had no other plans or prospects, and dropping out of law school to work full-time in a bar didn’t seem like a good option, so she trudged on, relying on innate intelligence to get through her classes. They were in debt, with Brian in medical school struggling with his own ideals of working for a global relief organization in some third world country, providing health care to the poor and underprivileged.
Then she got pregnant. Her period had always been erratic—twenty-five days, thirty-two days, light then heavy—and Gwen wasn’t conscious of being late, only of the nausea that morning, which she attributed to being out too late the previous night and getting up before sunrise to see Brian
before he left for the hospital. After he’d gone, she took a shower and a long hit off a joint and she felt better, the queasiness faded. Then the realization came upon her like a snap of her fingers. Part of it was the nausea, part the long interval it seemed since her last period. But mostly all of her awareness zoomed toward a spot deep in her abdomen, a spot the size of a pinhead, a spot that thrilled and terrified her. She felt it. She knew. She went to the drugstore, not to answer a question but to provide evidence to support her conclusion, and when Brian got back to their apartment that night, after nine o’clock, after a long day of his internal medicine clerkship and an evening in the lab, as soon as he walked through the door she cried and fell into his arms. She’d had an abortion once before, in her second year of college, and it had been harder and sadder than she’d expected, and now she didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how she’d gotten pregnant. They’d been using birth control, most of the time.
Brian saved her. She wasn’t afraid to admit it. This was one of those times in her life when she was drowning and needed to be saved and he was the perfect person to pull her out and he did. He wanted the baby. He didn’t want to be a doctor after all: more years of residency, paying back loans, dealing with managed care. The idealistic vision of giving back to the community didn’t seem so ideal. He wanted to do something now—like make money, like have a baby with Gwen. The concept of chivalry drove him. He knew of a good job opportunity with this drug company, Pherogenix. One thing about Brian, he reduced everything to its simplest terms and made a fast decision.
Brian smiled to himself, and though she’d been looking at a group of businesspeople at another table, Gwen caught his expression.
“What now?”
“I was just thinking of when I first met you. That was a special night for me.”
“You were bold, I’ll give you that.”
“It’s not bold when you go after what you want.”
“Need I remind you—I’m a ‘who’ not a ‘what.’”
“Don’t spoil it.”
“I’m sorry.” She took his hand. He poured more wine.
“So what is it with you and Jude?”
Gwen lowered her voice. “There is no ‘it.’ He’s someone from the past. And when I wanted to get some … he’s the only person I could think of who might be able to help me out.”
“And you felt fine looking him up after all these years.”
“We ran into him that day of the Winterfest, so it wasn’t completely out of nowhere,” Gwen said. “I was okay with it.”
“Because you wanted to get pot.”
“And it would be good to see him. We were friends once.”
“And you’ve bought something from him twice now?”
“Once in the winter and this time.”
“You haven’t seen him otherwise?”
“I had lunch with him the week I was downtown for jury duty,” Gwen admitted.
Brian nodded. Another piece of information not volunteered. “So did you ever do him?”
Gwen fingered her eyebrow. Now that the stitches were out, the tight skin itched. “That’s a charming way to put it.”
“You don’t have to answer.”
“We had a brief relationship before I met you,” Gwen said.
“Did it end before you started going out with me?”
“That’s what ended it.”
“I thought he was married then.”
“Do you want all the gory details?”
“No.” It was pretty much in line with what he suspected at the time. He and Gwen had never dissected each other’s past relationships, agreeing early on that the body count or details weren’t necessary or desired. He leaned closer to his wife. “You were pretty protective of him in Roger’s office. It seemed like there might be something more going on.”
“What—then or now?”
“You tell me.”
“Stop it. Why are you doing this?” She felt a strange sensation of the remnants of Jude’s kiss on her lips. She wiped her mouth with her fingers. Brian sensed something, but she couldn’t tell him. That wouldn’t benefit anyone.
“But you’ve thought of him,” Brian said. “He’s the one you went to see when you were looking for weed.”
“I told you, he’s the only one I could think of. Don’t make a bigger deal out of this than it is.”
The kiss from Jude had not been a big deal. Nothing with Jude had been a big deal, even nine years ago, when she worked at the Patriot. Or it didn’t turn out to be one, whatever Gwen might have thought at first. Jude had taken an immediate interest in her, beyond the employer-employee relationship. But not romantic. Not sexual. Not at first. He protected her, like a big brother. He wouldn’t let her hang around after work if she had a class the next day. He had hired her although he knew she lied about experience, he showed flexibility with shift scheduling, and intervened when a fling she had with one of the cooks ended ugly and the guy started harassing her—making comments whenever she walked into the kitchen, showing up one night at her apartment and knocking on the windows, even slamming himself against her door trying to get in. Gwen wasn’t sure if Jude fired him or he quit, but she never saw or heard from that cook again. And while Jude seemed tuned in to her personal and academic life, she knew little about him. Allegedly he had a wife, although he never talked about her and Gwen had never met her; not once had Gwen seen the woman in the Patriot. He also had a daughter, who unlike her mother did spend a lot of time at the Patriot, eating dinner in the kitchen, playing with dolls in an empty booth, eventually falling asleep on a cot in the office if the babysitter didn’t show up to take her home. She was a third or fourth grader then. Gwen helped her with homework a few times and taught her to sketch faces and fold paper into a cootie catcher that told fortunes.
One night Jude had to leave the restaurant in a hurry, pulling Gwen aside and telling her his wife had been taken to the emergency room, asking if Gwen could take Dana home after her shift. So he did have a wife.
He gave her the key to his house.
After work, Gwen lifted Dana from where she slept with a stuffed dog on a cot in the office and carried the sleeping girl and her pet down to her car. She drove to the address Jude gave her and parked in the driveway in front of a big wooden Victorian house with a turret and a porch. It was a historic house, completely restored, in one of the oldest neighborhoods.
When Gwen opened the door, Dana woke, asking where her father was.
“He had to go out for a little while,” Gwen explained.
“Are you my babysitter?”
“Yes, tonight I am.”
“Can I have ice cream?”
“It’s kind of late for ice cream,” Gwen said.
She escorted Dana up to her room. Sweet and sleepy, Dana leaned against Gwen as they climbed the stairs.
“Do you want me to help with your pajamas?” Gwen asked, but Dana had found her bed and was already drifting again. Gwen decided it was okay to let the girl sleep in her clothes, easier than trying to get her undressed and dressed again. She tucked Dana in, pulling the blankets to her chin, then cinching them down a few inches. It wasn’t a cold night. She looked at the girl’s cheek for a few minutes, then leaned down and kissed it.
She went back downstairs and after poking around all the rooms fell asleep on the living room couch. She opened her eyes when Jude came in the front door. Her face stuck to the leather couch as she sat up; then she stood, wobbly, unsure of her environment. Had she gone out and then home with someone after work?
No.
In two long strides Jude stood in front of her. He placed a hand on each of her arms. He said, “Thank you so much. You really bailed me out.”
“How’s your wife?” Gwen asked. “What happened to her?”
“To be honest, she’s in a rehab facility right now. She was having convulsions and had to be taken to the emergency room.”
“I hope she’s okay. I didn’t know—I wouldn’t have said anyth
ing.”
“No, I’m glad you asked. You’re one of the few people I don’t mind telling,” Jude said. “How was Dana?”
“An angel—now a sleeping angel.”
She wanted to hear more about Claire, but Jude didn’t go on, and she didn’t ask. He said he was having a glass of wine and did she want one. He chose a bottle of red from a rack on the wall and poured two glasses. With a deep exhale he sunk in next to her on the couch and handed her a glass. He looked at her as if undecided about something. Then a movement, like a tremor, passed through his eyes. She thought he might kiss her and she prepared for it, panicking about her sticky mouth, her sleepy breath. She took a quick drink of wine and swished it around her mouth.
Nothing happened. Yet she was sure he wanted to. Kiss her. And he did, finally, after they’d shared a few lines of coke, smoked a joint, and drank most of the bottle of wine, which turned out to be the recipe for Gwen to forget a little girl sleeping upstairs and a convulsive, addicted wife in the hospital. She was pretty wasted but fully into it and had sex with Jude twice on his plush leather couch. They fell asleep together covered by an afghan and Gwen opened her eyes only when someone shook her shoulder.
It was Dana, who’d heard a noise and come downstairs to get her daddy. “Are you going to be my new mommy?” she asked Gwen.
She left the house as pink dawn began to filter through the windows, head pulsing and stomach queasy.
They slept together a few more times—at her apartment—and she half expected something complicated and electrifying to start up, or maybe it already had. That churning feeling in her stomach from the first night never entirely toned down, the edge remained. But they never talked about their relationship; they gave each other no status reports; they didn’t take each other’s temperature. Jude didn’t bring up the subject and neither did she, but those late nights when he showed up at her apartment, she always let him in and didn’t ask about his wife. And then around that time she met Brian, which eliminated any chance of getting more involved with Jude, because she fell in love with Brian right away. He fit a vision of her ideal man in a way that Jude never would. She didn’t tell Brian about Jude. The recent all-nighter of getting wasted and having sex with her boss, then repeating, the sense of stepping along an edge—it wasn’t a talking point in a new relationship.
